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 In the News
"Linked Learning" Becomes Law!
By NBC Bay Area
Despite our struggle to pay for public schools, new laws offer exciting new
options for thousands of teenagers who might otherwise drop out. Hoping to reverse the state's stubbornly high dropout rate, California is retooling vocational education for a 21st century economy.
Pilot programs known as "linked learning" tie high school courses to job training
with local employers. Science classes are linked with healthcare and clean energy jobs; computer technology - with auto mechanics, game design, and so on.
Click here to view this report.
Tulare County students pitch in on movie set, get vocational lesson
By Brian Maxey, The Visalia Times Delta
Through a partnership with the Tulare County Film Commission, high school students from the Porterville area worked alongside a film crew on the set of a low-budget, independent short film.
About three dozen students worked on all stages of production for "The Devout," a dark thriller that follows a doctor and her brother through a Medieval England village ravaged by the plague.
Students from the Porterville Unified School District's Linked Learning Pathways program helped with tasks ranging from on-site medical assistance to set production, makeup consultation and some even documented the film crew for a daily broadcast aired in classrooms.
Seeking science-minded students
By Jennifer Bonnett, Lodi News-Sentinel
Want to build a robot that can shoot basketballs through hoops? What about learn to use computers to study strains of DNA, looking for a cure to a genetic disease? Now is your chance.
Even if you attend Liberty Ranch High School or a high school in the Lodi Unified School District, Galt High School has opened its Biomedical, Engineering, Science and Technology Academy to students who live outside the district.
...Career academies are shown to increase the engagement of high school students and provide a way for those outside the walls of the school to enhance students' educational experiences, according to Galt High engineering teacher Debra Crane.
Academies are different than electives because academy students have common English and math teachers working alongside career-focused teachers as mentors. Students in the small learning community spend all four years of high school together earning college credit focused on a common career path or industry.
Click here to read the article.
Viewpoints: For California schools we need less testing and more assessing
By Linda Darling-Hammond, Sacramento Bee
*Darling-Hammond is a professor of education at Stanford University and co-director of the Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education.
...Many schools and districts in California have already developed exciting, intellectually rigorous projects and assessments for students in these and other subjects. Envision Schools, New Tech and High Tech High Schools, Linked Learning schools, and many others require their students to engage in the kind of science and technology assessments that are used in Singapore, Hong Kong, Finland and other high-flying nations. Their outcomes show that they are preparing their students to be truly college- and career-ready. Shouldn't we do this for all our students? The governor's call to tap local initiative and creativity should encourage us to look to our own pioneers for ways to focus schools on the kind of learning that will matter for our children's - and California's - future.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/02/14/4261504/for-california-schools-we-need.html#storylink=c
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Policy Watch
State Policy: The deadline for bill introduction for California's 2012 legislative seesion has just passed. The Linked Learning Alliance is tracking a variety of bills with potential to impact Linked Learning. Here are a few key bills to watch:
AB 224 (Bonilla-D) - School Accountability: Academic Performance Index. Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to adjust the Academic Performance Index (API) to account for multiple indicators of student success, beyond graduation and achievement tests.
SB 275 (Hancock-D) - Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to align the accountability measures for regional occupational centers and programs, agricultural career technical education programs, partnership academies, and specialized secondary education programs into a uniform accountability metric based on specified indicators and pupil data.
SB 500 (Hancock-D) - Requests that the State Department of Education provide the legislature with analysis and recommendations on California Partnership Academies (CPA), based upon CPA-collected data, and further extends program enrollment authorization to Grade 9 students.
SB 1070 (Steinberg-D) - California Community Colleges Economic and Workforce Development Program: career-technical education pathways. This is currently a spot bill but is the vehicle for reauthorizing SB 70.
SB 1200 (Hancock-D) - Requires the Superintendent of Public Instruction to recommend and the State Board of Education to adopt the college and career readiness anchor standards developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative consortium.
SB 1458 (Steinberg-D) - Would evolve the Academic Performance Index to include more indicators of college and career readiness. This measure is a follow up by Senator Steinberg to SB 547, vetoed last year by Governor Brown, which would have evolved the Academic Performance Index (API) into an Education Quality Index (EQI) that would consist of a State Assessment Index, a Graduation Rate Index, a College Preparedness Index, and a Career Readiness Index.
Federal Policy: The Linked Learning Alliance is also monitoring legislation at the federal level, including the Education For Tomorrow's Jobs Act (HR 3154 and S. 1686), sponsored by Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-PA) and Bob Casey (D-PA).
The Education for Tomorrow's Jobs Act would provide school districts with flexibility to leverage Title I funds in support of a more comprehensive system that prepares students for success in college and a career. Districts choosing to use Title I funds in this way would leverage resources to support a more comprehensive innovation strategy- Linked Learning -at the high school and district levels. Districts choosing this flexibility must implement a system of schools or programs of study that integrate and deliver the four components of Linked Learning.
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